Wilson
by AbsoluteIndifference
Summary: Wilson is inanimate. Wilson gets around. Wilson is a volleyball with a face but no soul. Wilson is immortal.


_**Beached**_

_In which Wilson meets land, but gives no formal greeting._

Pride in the tide the moon will not hide, for the ocean is her plaything,

Water deep blue, whom time never knew, will cease its weighty resting,

Moon full of love, in ink-sky up above, extends soft hands for greeting,

And shorelines flee to the sea-foam's glee, unprepared for violent meeting.

Tidewaters rose, scouring beachheads of white and brown and black with their borrowed power. All that stood against the might of gravity was washed away, torn from the land of the terrestrial and sucked beneath into the swirling blue half-light of the deep. Sand, coconuts, palm fronds, driftwood, shells, the occasional corpse—none were safe as long as the moon exerted its forceful tearing and tugging and dragging, threatening to rip all that is, was, and will be into the oblivion of indiscriminate vacuum.

And yet those who walk the earth feel nothing.

Monstrously gentle, La Luna Belleza hangs on a rope weaved from the stars, dead to the universe at large but gleaming with gorgeous life to all who observe from below. Only the immortal can truly appreciate the moon for what it was: an equal, a rival, a lover, and a friend.

If Wilson could, he would have loved the moon. But he could not.

Water lapped upon land's doorstep, and he was displaced, crunching and pushing sand aside at every fateful meeting.

Rush forward. Pull back. Rush forward. Pull back.

Rush forward… Roll back.

The night was young, and the moon was full, and the endless cycle of greeting the shoreline then kissing it goodbye continued. Movement was constant, not disturbing in the least. Wilson was not seasick.

Wilson had no stomach.

Time, the great irrelevant beast, passed, and the tide ran back to Mother Ocean with many a new playmate in its soggy clutches.

Wilson was not among them. Fading blood dried slowly in the stagnant, tropical night, and the stars spun overhead: a gleaming show of light meant only for the gods.

Wilson was no god. Wilson _had_ no god. Wilson did not see.

But the show happened nonetheless, and all that mattered was that he was there.

He was there for the whirling dance of starlight through space.

He was there when Granny Moon met Mother Ocean in a slow, enveloping embrace, wrenching the shining matriarch from the sky an inch at a time.

He was there as light crept over the horizon, beating back the lovely, gripping darkness.

He was there for the heralding of life—seabirds and crabs and odd, prowling boars. Kicking about dew-drenched sand under the rising sun, snuffling and snorting at his blood-streaked form, and rooting, pecking, heckling along the beach, they searched for a meal, each passing Wilson by after only a brief, intimate examination.

Wilson was inedible.

Time stomped ever onward, and all was well and good—for Wilson was there—until along came The Whistling.

Long and sad, The Whistling was.

Somber notes rang out amongst the waves, casting clouds over the sun and blotting out the obscenely cheerful blue sky. All that heard It trembled and cried along with the lonely, keening howl; all except Wilson.

Wilson just sat because Wilson couldn't move because Wilson was immortal, like the sea and the moon and the stars. As was the case of all the Eternal Ones before him, gravity served as Wilson's limbs. Wilson didn't complain. He couldn't, and that didn't matter.

The Whistling approached, and along with it came an old, parched voice:

"Livin' on the edge—_you can't help yo'self from faaa-lin'_

Livin on the edge—_you can't help yo'self at a-all!_

Livin' on th—Hello! What's this?"

Wilson was kicked, plowing a shallow channel in the grit and bright white bird-scat of the beachhead. One, final Whistle tore the ocean air, and then all that was left was the voice.

"A… hoofball? What the hay?" Another kick, softer this time, and Wilson rolled mask-up, red blood of LIFE glaring at the now overcast sky. A figure loomed above, stringy, matted hair hanging like a cascade of moss around a wrinkled, elongated muzzle. Pointed, asymmetrical ears swiveled backward, and a pair of enormously expressive eyes widened in shock. "Oh Celestia, izzat blood?"

Yes. Yes it was.

Very observant.

Wilson was lifted. Bits of sand clung to his surface like apes clutching at the sides of a hot air balloon. Some fell, screaming their silent screams all the way down, and soon Wilson found himself surrounded by scratchy, green burlap.

Motion. Undulating and bouncing and swaying—like the waves—he moved again to the soft *phut-phut-phut* of footsteps in sand. Soothing…

"Hello?! Is there anypony out there?! Are ya hurt?!"

… not so soothing…

Moving became erratic. Bouncing and beating and thrashing, Wilson was carried onward on the back of some creature: a very old, excited beast.

"Blood… B-Blood means ponies—Hellooooo!—ponies mean *huff* ships—Any-*wheeze* Anypony?!—ships mean rescue—Please, answer me!"

The beach rushed by in a blur of bright, mingling colors while hoof-beats pounded along with the sound of the surf—all punctuated by the sound of yelling, panting, and whinnying.

Apparently, Wilson was on a horse. Why? Wilson didn't know because he couldn't know because it didn't matter.

All was well.

"Please! *sob* ANYpony?!"

Quite well, indeed.

Eventually, the uncomfortable motion ceased. The sun, All-father and Life-Giver, was sinking, and the old, talking equine gave up.

"I give… I g-give up."

He gave up, and under the dying light of another immortal, Wilson was carried into the dense foliage of the grand desert island: one of many.

Anonymous Island—population: one.

Wilson didn't count himself. Wilson couldn't count.

He was only on an island because the equine said so. He was "on an island" situated in the "middle of bucking nowhere" alone with "Sandcolt."

The equine—Sandcolt—talked to itself quite a bit, not that Wilson could hear him.

Wilson had no ears, but nonetheless he was there.

"Oh Sandy, why? Why did'ja git yer sill hopes up and run around all day instead of gathering food?" Wilson's perch swayed as "Sandy" ducked under an immense, toppled palm propped upon several of its steadfast brothers. "Now you'll have to go 'ungry, tonight, you foal, you…" Weighty eyes fell upon Wilson. "And so will our odd guest."

It had been many a month since Wilson had been addressed as one of the living, and now that he was considered alive he did what he did best: nothing.

Conversation often escalated from there.

"Oh no, don't apologize," the old creature continued on his own. "It weren't yor' fault. How was I s'posed to know ya weren't from some rescue ship er'other?" Another jostle, and the jungle thinned, reverting into a small clearing plagued with one inhabitant. With a dull thump, Wilson was discarded upon the fertile jungle peat under a rickety lean-to. The small structure was blotted out the maroon-tinged sky, and, though it looked ramshackle and maybe a little unsafe, it was dry: weaved palm fronds and ashen moss made sure of that.

The equine loomed above, silhouetted in the dying light of Wilson's first day ashore in ages. It was a light tannish color, not unlike his own sun-bleached surface, and sported a respectable beard, scraggly, white and rough to match its mane. Old, experienced eyes—the same color as the ocean—blinked, and Sandy Sandcolt snorted incredulously.

"I'm talkin' to a hoofball… Luna-be-damned." Sediment-caked muzzle met grit-coated stitch work. "A hoofball covered 'n blood… that kinda looks like a face." Sandy ran a hoof along Wilson's seams, loosening bits of palm frond from the slit above his mask. "Soggy palm-leaves… as hair?" After a moment of contemplation, the tan pony chuckled and shook its misshapen head. "You're an odd one, Sandy, imaginin' things look like faces."

Wilson found himself in the air again, hefted and flipped and spun about in one, deft motion before coming to a rest, still in the air, still between a pair of equine hooves, and still very much not alive. "Hold up, Sandy—whadda we have here?"

A beetle scuttled across the dirt below, leaving a trail of tiny footprints.

Wilson, nor Sandcolt, noticed.

"Wuh… Wuh-ill-sun?"

For a moment, they were one in the same for their obliviousness: except for one small detail…

"Will… Wilson."

Hot breath blew against Wilson's plastic shell, condensing and exaporating away in mere seconds, never to return, and he was turned mask-up once more. Sandy stared down at him with wide, quizzical eyes. They were so full of life, burning like twin stars of deep blue on the edge of catastrophic supernova: preparing to collapse into the void.

"Wilson?"

The light would soon dim. Flesh would rot, and teeth would crumble under the marching boots of time. Sandy—no matter the protest—would die one day… but not Wilson.

Small detail, indeed.


End file.
